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This was actually the first Halloween design I did, but it has ended up as my last Halloween nail art post. I think as I worked on the other looks I got excited about each of those so they went up first. I did a similar design to this one last year with a spiders web, but last time I tried to use a nail art pen and I didn't feel like I had a lot of control and the lines were too thick for my liking. So this year I tried it again with my good old Sharpie.

I know, I know, my spider only has six legs, but there is a good reason for that. In my boyfriend's bathroom there's a spider that we don't mind living there, as he's one of those ones with a tiny body and long thin legs, but we were really surprised to discover he only has five legs! I had no idea spiders could live with legs missing, but apparently they can. So now I often find myself getting confused and thinking spiders have six legs rather than eight (I've never claimed to be bright!). So my little incy wincy only has six legs and I think it would have actually been a tight squeeze to get eight on there.

I can't actually remember the name of the shade I used as a base for this, and I'm not at home so I can't check, but after a quick look at the orange shades on the Ciate website I think it might have been Hopscotch. As usual I then sealed the base with a top coat before drawing the design on with a black Sharpie and sealing it all with another layer of top coat. In hindsight I wish I'd added a couple of small white dots to make little eyes for him. To be honest I'm not sure why I did the whole spider dangling down across the ring finger and thumb part, it just seemed like a good idea at the time!

So that's the last of this years Halloween nail art. This weekend I will be attempting a bonfire night based design and then it's on to the Christmas designs (I'm so excited!).

Just over a week ago I posted a Lush Christmas bath bomb haul after I decided to treat myself to some of the products from their Christmas range. After my trip to Alton Towers Sunday before last, that involved an awful lot of walking, my legs were really sore so the following Monday I decided to have a bath and try out one of the bombs. It took me a good few minutes to try and decide which one to go for, but as it was cracked and I was slightly concerned that it would break I chose So white.

As I said in my haul post this one contains bergamot and neroli oil, rose and orange flower absolute and it smells of crisp, sweet apples.

This is a heavy bomb so when I dropped it into the bath it plunged straight down to the bottom. It began to fizz and started to release a light foam/small amount of bubbles. I knew this is supposed to have a rosy coloured centre but after a couple of minutes I hadn't seen any sign of this. I couldn't see the bomb because it was at the bottom of the bath under the foam it was producing but I think it took so long because this bomb takes a long time to fully dissolve. I'd say it probably took at least five minutes, if not more before it was all gone. Eventually I started to see signs of a rosy colour. Although it didn't start to release a rosy coloured foam the water just started to change colour. My camera wasn't coping with trying to pick up the rosy coloured water but you can just see it in the bottom picture. By the time it had fully dissolved the bath water was a very pretty rosy pink colour. Unfortunately I couldn't really smell the lovely apple scent you got from the complete bomb and after a few minutes of sloshing around a bit the foam on top of the water disappeared, so I was just left with a pink coloured bath.

I didn't notice that my skin particularly benefited from using this one, but I did have a little accident and made the bath too hot and was more concerned with trying to cool down a bit rather than checking how soft my skin was! Would I buy this one again? I'm afraid not as I think it's too expensive for a little bit of foam/bubbles and pink water.

I'm writing this post after having spent my evening doing my first ever attempt at pumpkin carving! When I got the top off I was surprised to find a pumpkin is actually pretty much empty, I thought it would be full of soft squidgy stuff! It took me a fair while to try and get all the stringy stuff out and there's still quite a bit left in there. I'm not sure if this will be a problem or if it doesn't matter too much? Anyway, I didn't go for a standard face I went for a cat's face and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. If you want to have a look you can find a picture over on my Instagram.

I'm not sure what inspired me to do this design. I have done another design using a pumpkin kind of shade, that I'll be posting early next week, and after I'd done that one I thought why didn't I just draw a face on each nail to make each one a pumpkin.

I've not shown you my thumb nail because that was the first one I attempted and it went a little wrong. I always attempt a new design on my thumb nail first as if it does go wrong I can just hide my thumb and only show you the rest of my nails! My little nail didn't quite go to plan either but it doesn't look too bad.

My base for this look is again a Ciate shade, all of my Halloween designs have featured shades from last years Mini Mani Month advent calender! This time I used Encore, which is described by Ciate as a muted orange, and is part of the Dragonfly collection. I would describe this as a toffee apple shade, or an autumn falling leaves kind of shade. It's really too dark to be a genuine pumpkin shade but I think it actually works quite well.

All I did after applying my base was apply a top coat to seal it and then used my black Sharpie to draw the faces on and then gave them plenty of time to dry before sealing with a top coat. Sharpie's are amazing for precise nail art but you do have to be careful as they do smudge very easily when you apply your top coat. If you want to try using Sharpie's my advice would be to leave a good length of time before applying your top coat, maybe half an hour to an hour, and them cover your nail as quickly as possible, if you can manage it one or two quick brush strokes is best.

Unfortunately I had to remove this quite quickly, as I was in the running for a hand modelling job, but I think this was my favourite Halloween design, it looks amazing on your nails!

This is by no means a new fragrance, in fact it's been around for many years now, but it's one of my all time favourite fragrances. So when I was having a wander round Boots a few days ago and noticed that the 30ml size was reduced from £30 down to £14.99, I decided to treat myself.

I just adore this fragrance and although it doesn't bring back memories as such it does remind me of being on holiday, as my last bottle I bought in duty free on the way out, and just smelling that familiar scent makes me happy. It's quite strange how a fragrance can do that, I actually find being able to smell this comforting.

I haven't got a good nose for fragrances but checking a stockist tells me that this has top notes of citrus blend, chilled vodka and tomato leaves, heart notes of water lilly, coral orchid and daffodil and base notes of white birch and tulip tree wool. I always describe this scent as fizzy, but I think what I'm actually referring to is the citrus blend. It's a very fresh smell, that some might people prefer to wear in summer, but I love wearing this all year round and I find it lasts well on me. If I remember correctly I think this is one of the longest lasting fragrances I've tried.

I've been thinking about this fragrance a lot recently and I think the reason for this is because a few months ago I was having a sniff of some Jo Malone fragrances in Selfridges with Rose from Mixed gems (who is the Selfridges Birmingham beauty personal shopper) and Blackberry and Bay instantly reminded me of this fragrance. If Blackberry and Bay had been a dupe I would have probably bought it there and then but as I'm sure you're aware Jo Malone fragrances are quite pricey.

I'm so pleased to have this back in my life and I can see this being the only fragrance I will wear for at least the next couple of weeks and also over Christmas. As I said this is currently £14.99 in Boots and it's also on offer on over Escentual for the even better price of £13.50 (but you will have to pay £1.95 P&P unless you spend over £30).

Ok so in this one there's only actually some nail art on my ring finger, but I really like the one nail I did so I've decided to feature it. I could have done a similar design on all of my nails, but that would have taken quite a while and I didn't have that long to do it. So I just painted my other nails with a black nail varnish containing a very fine silver shimmer, to fit with the Halloween theme. I'm sorry my pictures aren't very good but I didn't check them before I removed this and I unfortunately I don't have time to do them again before Halloween, and there's not much point doing them again after!

Do you ever decide you like something and then become a little obsessed with it? That's what I've done recently with Sugar skulls! I've not really taken a lot of notice of them before but as we're approaching Halloween various makeup looks are popping up and I took a shine to Sugar skulls. I then thought that as long as I could get the design small enough, it would look great as nail art.

Obviously as skulls are white I used a white base and went for my faithful Barry M Silk in Pearl as I didn't want a flat white, despite the fact that bone isn't slightly shimmery! I started off by placing the eyes first so I could work out how much space I had left for the rest of the features and any decoration. I wanted the eyes to be flat black rather than shimmery so just used a standard black and a dotting tool for the eyes. I then drew on the nostrils and the mouth with a black Sharpie. This years Halloween looks appear to be in association with Ciate as I used Boudoir (what I used for the blood in my dripping blood look) and then also used Ciate Electronica. I wanted to use a bright red and then couldn't decide on what other colours to use so pretty much went for the first one I picked up.

It may only be on one finger but I'm really pleased with how it turned out and it looks amazing, if I do say so myself!

I've admitted in the past that I'm quite superficial when it comes to blogs and a good design, layout and pretty pictures will always draw me in. I usually know within a couple of seconds if it's likely that I'll be hitting the follow button. I know this probably isn't very fair, as not everybody can afford to have pretty designs made for them (including me), but I just can't help it. I follow quite a few blogs already and my Bloglovin feed often gets out of control, so I'm quite picky about adding more blogs to my list.

As I said pretty pictures have always drawn me in but recently a few of the blogs I follow have really stood out to me because of their photography. So I though I'd do a quick post to share the blog love and show you some of their photos.

I'm sure you're probably aware by now that Lush have recently released their Christmas range. If not, who are you and where have you been?! I recently popped into a Lush store on a Saturday, which really wasn't a great idea, but I did manage to battle through the teenage girls to get an arm through to the bath bombs and I grabbed five to try. I haven't actually used any Lush bath products for several years now as I think they can be a little expensive, but I decided to treat myself and the Christmas range just looks amazing.

Here's what I went for.

Dashing Santa is a smallish flat shaped (as in it's not round or ball shaped) bomb that looks like a running Santa. Although Santa only works one day a year he has a lot to do in that one day so I would imagine he definitely dashes around the world delivering all those presents. This one contains mandarin and bergamot oil, orange flower absolute and smells like satsumas. It also contains snowflake and radiant gold lustre, which I had to google, and discovered these are edible fine powder icing used for colouring.

Father Christmas is a large bomb but then this is reflected in the price as this one is quite expensive at £3.50. I know you can break up some of Lush's more expensive bath products to use in more than one bath but I'm not sure you could do that with this one. You could try giving him a crack on a hard surface (could you really do that to Santa??) but I'm not sure if he'd just crumble. This one doesn't have any oils in, so it may not be a skin softening one, but it will turn your bath bright red, followed by vivid green and will smell like Snow fairy.

Cinders is a small bomb that has been inspired by sitting next to a fireplace with friends and family. It contains almond, sweet orange and cinnamon leaf oil, sea salt and also popping candy. This one is supposed to be sweet and spicy so might be like bathing in one of the spicy cinnamon Christmas candles, but obviously without the hot wax!

So white is another large bomb and isn't much to look at as it's just plain white, but when it starts to dissolve it does have a rosy centre. This contains bergamot and neroli oil, rose and orange flower absolute and smells of apples. Again I'm not sure if you could break this down to use in more than one bath. Mine has actually started to crack on one side, so I could probably pull it into two halves if I wanted, but I don't really want to spoil the surprise of what's inside and kind of just want to chuck the whole lot in. Also the apple smell from this is so amazing I don't really want to dilute it by using less.

Finally, Butterbear is the cutest little thing. It's plain white like So white but is in the shape of a bear and it should really have a little brown nose, but I think mine has been knocked off. This has the same vanilla fragrance as Butterball and contains fair trade Colombian cocoa butter, ylang ylang oil and cocoa powder. The cocoa powder is making me hope it might smell slightly chocolatey, but as far as I'm aware it doesn't. I think this is the one I'm looking forward to using the most and if I love it I really don't mind as this one is just £1.95.

Obviously I haven't actually used any of these yet but I will post about each one as I get through them.

The packaging looks different but this is actually Nuxe's cult favourite lip balm Reve de Miel. I had no idea this has been around for 20 years and this is the limited edition 20th anniversary packaging. Mine has a pink lid (it's described as red online, but it's pink) but it's also available with either a green or yellow lid.

I've been working my way through my Philosophy Kiss me tonight lip balm, which is a very good lip balm (but pretty pricey at £17!), but after a bad reaction to one of Philosophy's products I've decided not to use any of them any more. So when I spotted that this was on offer on Look Fantastic for just £6.33, and that I could get free delivery, I snapped it up.

This contains honey, shea butter, almond oil, beeswax and vitamin E and is designed to soothe, repair, nourish, soften and heal. This is a thick, matte balm and one of the best things about it is definitely the smell. Unscrew the lid, have a sniff and you're hit with the scent of Terry's Chocolate orange. As this is a really thick balm it's best applied before you go to bed, so it can work its magic as you sleep, but you can also apply it during the day if your lips are suffering and could possibly use a very thin layer under lipstick.

Another thing I like about this product is that there is a best before date both on the box and on the actual tub. Once opened this product has a shelf life of 12 months but unopened this is good until May 2017.

My lips haven't yet got really sore, they'll be saving that for when the really cold weather arrives, but this has done a great job so far of keeping them soft and smooth as they've started to get drier as autumn has finally arrived.

The ultimate duo has definitely got to be teaming this with one of Lush's lip scrubs. There are currently four lip scrub flavours to choose from (including the limited edition Christmas one) but my recommendation would be to use it with Mint Julips. The combination of Mint Julips' After eight mints scent followed by Reve de Miel's Chocolate orange is just amazing and leaves my lips with a cooling minty sensation that I really like. If like me you suffer with dry flaky lips in the winter then you definitely need to add both of these products to your skincare collection and apply them every night before bed. This is still on offer over on Look Fantastic so go and grab it now. This is also available over on the Nuxe UK website.

It's time for my second Halloween nail art design and this one was actually inspired by a pin badge. The lovely Vicki from Lets Talk Beauty has a badge business called Kool Badges. When the Kool Badges Twitter account tweeted a picture of a selection of their Halloween badges there was one particular design that I thought would look great as nail art. So I gave it a try.

Can you tell I love playing around with Picmonkey when it comes to my Halloween nail art images? The badge that inspired me features a purple coloured sky with the tops of winter bare trees just visible at the bottom and bats flying in front of a large yellow moon.

The closest base colour I could find in my collection came in the form of Ciate's Pillow fight, which is a light grey with a hint of lilac (according to the Ciate website). It's not as purple as the night sky on the badge, although it does look a little more lilac in person than in these photos, but I think it did work quite well as a spooky night base. I only wanted one moon, as there is only one moon in the sky, so I used a blob of a yellow Barry M shade on my ring finger. I'm sorry I don't know what the yellow shade is called but it's quite an old one. I then used a brown Sharpie to draw on the trees (this doesn't quite look how I wanted it to!) and then a black Sharpie to draw on some bats (these didn't quite go to plan either, some look a little poorly!). I then left this to dry for a while before sealing with a glossy top coat.

It looks a little rough but I'm quite pleased with this one and although my nails are smaller than a pin badge I think I've just about managed to squeeze the complete design on my ring finger, minus a bat!

I've had all of these rings for a while now and realised a few days ago that I've completely forgotten to blog about any of them, which is strange as I wear them regularly. Although sometimes I think it's a case of the things you use/wear the most you don't think to blog about, or at least it is for me anyway. If you've been reading my blog for a while I'm sure you're aware I'm a bit of a fan of Dixi's rings, so here are a few of my newest additions.

My Dixi ring pictures are actually some of my most 'like'd on Instagram, in fact one holds my 'most liked' record (top right) out of all my pictures on Instagram, so I thought I might as well just make a collage of Instagram pictures.

I'd had my eye on the Show me the way arrow wrap midi ring (£12) for so long, so when they ran an offer reducing it to £9 I took it as a sign and grabbed it. It's currently out of stock but you can pop your email address into the box that pops up on the item page to be notified if/when it does come back into stock. This one is rhodium plated copper (nickel and lead free) so although it does look like silver it's not quite as shiny and silver as real silver is. Due to the design of this one it can be adjusted slightly if required.

I'd also had my eye on the Moon child ring(£16) for a long time and again I think I got this on offer. This one is also currently out of stock but again you can pop your email address in to receive a notification of new stock. This one is also rhodium plated copper and is available in several different sizes and can also be worn as a midi ring if you choose a smaller size.

The Boheme mini elephant ring(£25) is one of Dixi's newest releases and it is currently in stock (yay!). Dixi released three new rings together, this one, a bulls head ring (sold out!) and a guiding spirit arrowhead ring and to celebrate they offered 20% off, so yep I got this one on offer too! I fell in love with this one as soon as I saw it so had to take advantage of the discount that was only valid for the night that they launched. This one really is a beautiful ring and is actually sterling silver and I adore it.

Dixi have just launched a new range called Supernova with over 100 new products, so if you like the look of these rings get yourself over to the Dixi website and have a little look.

When I attended the Lush Spa event (post here) at the end of my facial I was asked to choose between some flavours, without being told what they were actually for. After I'd made my selections I discovered this was for one of their scrubs and one of their lip balms for the final part of my facial. I did actually have a Popcorn lip scrub but I kind of forgot about it and when I got it out it was past its date and had dried up. So I recently decided to treat myself to a new one ready for winter.

What could be better than edible skincare? Well that's what Lush lip scrubs are. They're made of just a few ingredients, with the main one being caster sugar, and all the ingredients are edible. The idea is you dip your finger in (yeah, I know it's not the most hygienic) and grab a small amount of scrub before then gently rubbing this onto your lips. You might want to hold your other hand under your chin as you will end up with a few sugar crystals dropping off your lips. You then just lick it off, although it's likely you might have to brush a few last bits of sugar off with your hand. Finally follow with a lip balm. The best time to do this is before bed before applying a thick lip balm, but you can also do it before applying lipstick if your lips are a bit flaky.

This is available in three flavours, Mint Julips, Bubblegum and Popcorn, plus there is currently a limited edition flavour for Christmas called Santa's lip scrub, which I believe tastes like fizzy cola bottles. Bubblegum and Popcorn smell like their names suggest (with Popcorn being of the salty variety) and Mint Julips to me smells just like After dinner mints, like peppermint in chocolate.

The lip scrubs are £5.50 each which I think is pretty reasonable and they have a shelf life of 14 months, so there's plenty of time to get through the pot. I suffer with naturally dry lips that can get really sore and flaky once the cold weather sets in, but I refuse to let that get in the way of me being able to to wear lipstick in the winter. So I'll be using this each night with a heavy duty lip balm.

It might still be a little too early for Halloween nail art but we are now in October I couldn't wait to post this design. This one's more on the slasher movie side of horror rather than ghosts and ghouls, but actually thinking about it, this could be the aftermath of a zombie trying to eat you....

The inspiration for this design actually came from a stamping plate from the Scholar collection by MoYou London. The image is supposed to be spots of ink, like you'd get if a fountain pen leaked, but I thought if you used red instead of black or blue this could also look like spots of blood. I tried to stamp the image but at the moment I really can't master stamping, so I had to rethink how I could do it.

In the end I just used a dotting tool. I applied a base of Barry M Silk in Pearl as I wanted maximum contrast with the drops of blood. Obviously I wanted a red shade that really would look like blood so I went with Ciate Boudoir which I think is the perfect blood red shade. I then just took three different sizes of dotting tool to create different size drops of blood, so it looked like somebody was bleeding as they're walking along, and used multiple dots on top of each other to create the pools of blood.

The dotting part of one of my tools has come loose and has only previously come out when I've been cleaning it, but this actually fell out when I while I was doing some of the dots. At first I was annoyed thinking it would have ruined my design but then realised that actually it helped as it created the look of smeared or splattered blood.

I wasn't sure whether to go for the same design on all of my nails or go for something different on an accent nail and in the end decided to paint the whole nail red to represent a large pool of blood.

I haven't wet shaved my legs for years now, not because I'm an advocate of hairy legs on women (I hate having hairy legs!) but because I suffer with terrible shaving rash. I remember begging my mum to let me start shaving my legs when I was at school and she told me once I started I'd regret it, and she was right. I don't mind having to shave my legs regularly if I want them to stay hair free, but what I do hate is the itchy rash I can get depending on how I do shave my legs.

I use an electric razor as that minimises the rash that I get but when I was kindly sent Lush's new D'fluff strawberry shaving soap* by Lush Meadowhall I decided to give wet shaving another try.

I don't think I've ever come across a product that looks or feels like this before. It looks like a strawberry mousse but then when you stick your fingers in it it's actually a lot more 'solid' than it appears. I was expecting it to be very soft just like a mousse but it is thicker and more solid than that. Oil wise it contains rapeseed, coconut, rose hip and sweet wild orange as well as cocoa butter, fresh strawberries and vanilla and rose absolute. This has an amazing strawberry smell and there's even little chunks of strawberry in it.

A few weeks ago (I know, it's taken me ages to write this up!) I jumped in the bath to give it a try. If I do wet shave I usually shave with the hair rather than against it as this minimises friction and the resulting rash, but shaving this way is far from a close shave. On this occasion I decided to be brave and shave the way you're supposed to, risking a shaving rash, all in the name of product testing. I had a soak for a while first hoping to help soften the hair before I started. I also bought a brand new fancy razor that contains something like 4/5 blades to try and minimise how many times I'd need to go over each area. Is anybody else a little scared by how many razor blades razors contain now?!

I didn't find that this produced a lather but was more like using a conditioner for shaving. It helped the razor to glide over my skin without any nicks, but still provided a close shave, and left my skin feeling really soft and moisturised.

Unfortunately I did end up with a rash, but this is nothing against this as a product, I've never been able to wet shave with anything and not come out with a rash. On this occasion the rash wasn't actually that bad, although it may have helped that I made sure I applied aloe vera gel quite regularly. The actual red lumpy rash was quite minimal, in fact it hardly came out at all, but it itched like a b****.

I was worried that this would a very expensive way to shave a large area like your legs as a small 70g pot is £5.75, but actually you don't have to use very much, so it will last a lot longer than I thought it might. If any men in your life suffer with dry skin on their face or irritation from shaving then this might be the perfect product for them to try. Although this didn't stop me at least getting the itching associated with a shaving rash it is a lovely product to use and I'd definitely recommend it.

My first real introduction to Barry M was their Silk range that was released earlier this year. To begin with I bought Meadow to give the range a try and it wasn't long before I added a further three shades to my collection. I adore them and have got a lot of use out of them throughout the spring and summer, particularly the white shade Pearl as I often use this as a white base for nail art.

When I spotted on Twitter that Barry M had released three new A/W shades for the range I couldn't get out of the door quick enough. These were only available in Superdrug but have now also been released in Boots.

Whereas the previous shades were very spring/summer appropriate pastels the autumn/winter shades are much deeper and darker. I described Forest as a turquoise shade on Instagram but only realised afterwards turquoise is a lighter blue/green, what I actually meant was teal. It's more of a blue shade but the shimmer creates flashes of green and also purple. Orchid is a Cadbury's purple shade (do people understand what I mean when I say that?) and has the least prominent shimmer of the three new shades and finally Poppy is a cranberry red with gold shimmer.

The silk effect is achieved through the combination of shimmer and a semi-matte finish. They definitely aren't fully matte, as you can see from the reflection in my swatches, but they're far from glossy either. You could leave them as they are or you could matte them down fully with a matte top coat or make them glossy with a standard top coat. These are quite thin and you'll need two to three coats, I usually go for three but have only used two on each of the swatches above. These dry very quickly so I don't find that applying three coats takes up a lot of time.

All three are gorgeous shades and I can see Forest and Poppy appearing in some Christmas nail art as they're perfect Christmas colours. The three new Silk shades are available now in Superdrug and Boots and are £3.99 each.